Stitches
by gothicorca1895
Summary: He was newly created, custom-made, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what SHE did to her children...Movieverse, Other-Wybie centric. Oneshot. EDIT: I'm so sorry for the mis-upload! Thank you for pointing it out to me.


**_Disclaimer: Coraline, Wybie, Other Mother, et cetera are all the property of other people n' stuff._**

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As soon as Coraline's bright, sunshiney face disappeared into _her_ house, he felt his own face falling. He'd kept a smile, like he was meant to. Now he could smile no longer, because he knew what was going to happen.

He was newly created, custom-made, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what _she_ did to her children. Coraline was falling for it hook, line, and sinker. And soon enough, _she_ would take her horrible needle fingers – fingers he feared more than anything in any world – and sew the buttons, cold and dead and black, over Coraline's lovely eyes, warm and hazel and _alive_.

_She_ escorted Coraline lovingly inside, and then turned to him. Her fingers twitched at the sight of his anguished face. Her beautiful, terrible red lips pursed disapprovingly. **Smile!** The unspoken command rebounded harshly through his mind. He cringed away, taking a few involuntary steps back – and stumbled over something, falling flat on his back. He expected to find her slim, towering figure looming over him, but no. She had retreated inside with Coraline.

He sat up, absently brushing dirt from his clothes. Icy fear – fear of _her_ – was in total control of his being now. _She_ would punish him; that was a given. He was newly created, custom-made, but he wasn't stupid. _She_ made her puppets to obey, and if they got too independent…

And he was running, running to nowhere, because he knew this world only went back on itself. But he had a strange idea that if he ran out far enough, then she wouldn't be able to catch him.

A stupid idea from the start. He got no farther than the edge of the whitelands when his legs flew out from under him. As he staggered to his feet, he felt long, tenuous fingers close around his shoulder.

"Just what do you think you're doing?!"

He tried not to move. He tried not to look at _her_, knowing already that she wouldn't waste her false form on punishments.

"Running away?! From me?! How dare you!"

The tips of two of those horrible needles closed, impossibly strong, over the lobe of his ear, and her hideous face loomed close. He winced in pain as she began to pull him along, headed for whatever horrors she had in store for him.

"Are you forgetting that _I_ created you?! That without me, you would be nothing but a heap of clothes and a pile of dust?!"

She dragged him into the house, then finally released her grip as she shoved him violently into one of her workshops. Already, he glimpsed the black thread.

"Remember, you wear my eyes. You're _mine_. Obey now, because one chance is all you get. I don't want you to upset Coraline." As she said the last, she looked concerned and wistful, or as much as a monster could appear worried about her stolen daughter.

Coraline. This all came down to Coraline, didn't it? He was newly created, custom-made, but he wasn't stupid. _She_ was all about her children. That was why he was made in the first place, for Coraline. Now he would be punished for her, too.

Now there was malice somehow in _her_ static eyes, and her sharpest needle-finger was threaded. He forced himself to remain still. Stitches always hurt more if you moved.

Two other stabbing fingers stretched up the corners of his mouth painfully, and then the needle plunged in. He screamed silently as the sharp entities pierced his flesh, feeling sure that he would crumble back to the dust he was formed from. No such luck. _She_ pulled the thread taut, then set to work on the other side.

After what seemed like innumerable minutes of agony, she had finished her sewing, and released him as she slipped back into her beautiful guise. He collapsed to his knees, bringing his hands up to his tender cheeks. He kept his head bowed as he heard _her_ padding toward the exit. Close to the door, she stopped and said to him again, "I don't want you to upset Coraline."

He hauled himself from the workshop, through the hall, and to the mirror. Slowly, apprehensively, he raised his head.

The sight of his own face made him recoil. With her stitches, she had pulled his mouth into a crooked, lopsided grin, a smile that no one should ever have to see. He hung his head again, stewing in the irony. There was method to _her_ madness. "I don't want you to upset Coraline," she'd said. She knew that he didn't want to upset Coraline either, wouldn't dare show his hideous face to the living girl.

But there was something that even _she_ hadn't counted on.

He was newly created, custom-made, but he wasn't stupid. Stitches could be broken by living hands.

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_A/N: This is the second oneshot I wrote for my newest obsession, Coraline. If I get good reviews, I might post the first. __I'm a lover of Other Wybie, which is why both this shot and the other one are Other Wybie-centric. Thanks for reading!_


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